The King of the Netherlands (I kid you not) had his birthday yesterday, 27-4-19. The city of Amsterdam always turns into one big fleamarket on Kingsday. Kingsday is always crowded because this is the only day it’s allowed for everybody to sell anything on the streets. We don’t know the origin of this custom, please look that up if you are really interested.

Weather-wise it wasn’t such a good day for shopping and selling outside. Lot’s of wind and rain made sure that the flea-market-fun was cut short. So a lot of people just left their unsold stuff lying in the street, didn’t clean up or anything and went on their way. Most likely to drink more beer because that’s another custom during Kingsday.

You must now that this is all perfectly good stuff that’s left behind. Many clothes, kitchen appliances, lamps, books, jewelry and also lot’s of toys. Vintage records and antique collectables were left in the rain for garbage. The waste-collectors came as early as 7 o’clock PM. Seeing everything just being trown away and not recycled made us sad: it all seems very respectless.

To cheer ourselves up, we managed to save a pair of black pumps, never-worn plastic Primark pumps, which we are never gonna wear, but throwing away new shoes…we just can’t.